The conclusions of recent 2017 and 2018 clinical trials recommend using reflexology to increase the
milk volume of mothers with primature infants, particularly considering its simplicity, high acceptance and no reported side effects.

Studies show the effectiveness of both natural therapies in curing and preventing inflammation and helping cells to regenerate.

Furthermore, reflexology and massage enhance the elastic properties of tissues.

Reflexology also helps manage the inevitable psychological factors associated with RSI, combining its physical therapeutic effects with its positive impact on stress, thus enabling the person to relax and let go of pain.

Recent studies (2018) have further demonstrated the effectiveness of reflexology in dealing with pain,
concluding that "adding reflexology to standard analgesic care is effective in reducing postoperative pain at rest and in motion, especially for patients experiencing moderate to severe pain".

"Pain, which is caused by an unpleasant (noxious) stimulus, is a stressor that can threaten homoeostasis. The body’s adaptive response to pain involves physiological changes, which are useful and potentially life-saving in the initial stages. If the adaptive response persists, harmful and life-threatening effects may ensue. Pain is noxious, which makes it a powerful protective force: indeed the inability to feel pain is associated with a shortened life expectancy (Shin et al, 2016). After injury, pain encourages us to adopt behaviours that help the healing process; for example, resting the painful part of the body...

..Pain inhibition can be stimulated or enhanced by endogenous or synthetic opioids. Endogenous opiods can be stimulated by acupuncture, exercise and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) (Claydon et al, 2011), and by touch therapies such as Reflexology through which sensory input competes with pain signals, which reduces the onward signalling of pain by the brain
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Pain inhibition can also be stimulated by hypnosis (deep relaxation), which has been used with good effect in acute and long-term pain... (Brugnoli, 2016, Uman et al, 2013)..."

Dr. Robert Ader, an experimental psychologist was among the first scientists to show how mental processes influence the body’s immune system, a finding that changed modern medicine

Dr. Robert Ader was known for his research on the relationship between the mind and body...he spent his entire career as a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, conducted some of the original experiments in a field he named himself, psychoneuroimmunology. His initial research, in the 1970s, became a touchstone for studies that have since mapped the vast communications network among immune cells, hormones and neurotransmitters.
It introduced a field of research that nailed down the science behind notions once considered magical thinking: that meditation helps reduce arterial plaque; that social bonds improve cancer survival; that people under stress catch more colds; and that placebos work not only on the human mind but also on supposedly insentient cells.

As late as 1985, the idea of a connection between the brain and the immune system was dismissed in an editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine as “folklore.” “Today there is not a physician in the country who does not accept the science Bob Ader set in motion,” said Dr. Bruce Rabin, founder of the Brain, Behavior and Immunity Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who considered Dr. Ader a mentor.

Two brains are better than one. At least that is the rationale for the close - sometimes too close - relationship between the human body's two brains, the one at the top of the spinal cord and the hidden but powerful brain in the gut known as the enteric nervous system.

For Dr. Michael D. Gershon, the author of "The Second Brain" and the chairman of the department of anatomy and cell biology at Columbia, the connection between the two can be unpleasantly clear.

The connection between the brains lies at the heart of many woes, physical and psychiatric. Ailments like anxiety, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers and Parkinson's disease manifest symptoms at the brain and the gut level. "The majority of patients with anxiety and depression will also have alterations of their GI function," said Dr. Emeran Mayer, professor of medicine, physiology and psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles....

We examined the somatotopical relationship between cortical activity and sensory stimulation of reflex areas in reflexology using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Three reflex areas on the left foot, relating to the eye, shoulder, and small intestine were stimulated during the experiment.
A statistical analysis showed that reflexological stimulation of the foot reflex areas corresponding to the eye, shoulder, and small intestine activated not only the somatosensory areas corresponding to the foot, but also the somatosensory areas corresponding to the eye, shoulder, and small intestine or neighboring body parts.

Thus, the findings showed that reflexological stimulation induced a somatosensory process corresponding to the stimulated reflex area and that a neuroimaging approach can be used to examine the basis of reflexology effects.

Reflexology is a common choice of women with breast cancer as supportive care during treatment. It involves stimulation of specific locations of the feet called reflexes using a specialised walking motion with the thumb of the reflexologist.

Reflexology has shown potential for the successful management of cancer and treatment-related symptoms and improvement in physical functioning; however to date, the mechanism of action for these improvements is unknown.

One confounder to the study of reflexology is the 'human factor'. To study the effects of the stimulation of the reflexes independent of the 'human factor', there is a need for an alternative method for the delivery of reflexology.

The objective of this work was to design and create a robotic reflexology device that would deliver a breast cancer-specific reflexology protocol to the feet of patients.

A prototype robotic reflexology device was developed and tested for feasibility, safety and acceptability with breast cancer survivors (n= 13), and preliminary efficacy in symptom management and enhanced functional status with a sample of women undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer (n= 13).

Safety, feasibility and acceptability were established, and significant improvements from pre- to post-device-delivered reflexology were seen in symptom severity among women on chemotherapy.